Training Week One: In Review

As you know, this was my first official week of training. While I'm usually a stickler for completing every single mile on my training schedule, I have to admit I was kind of a slacker this week. My plan was to walk two miles every weekday and then 5/3 on Saturday/Sunday. On Tuesday, my evening walking plans were scrapped when our friend Dan invited us to go out to the lake after work. We had a great time (I did a little swimming while the guys took turn skiing and wake boarding), but we got home too late to do any walking.

I made up a mile that I'd missed by walking 3 miles Wednesday morning, but then Thursday after my second steroid injection for my back (this time closer to my tailbone--ouch!) I was way too sore to consider walking. I made up another mile by walking 3 miles Friday morning, which was really okay since that pattern was a little bit closer to the suggested weekly schedule anyway.

The best part of my first week of training was this morning's 5 mile walk, because I had lots of company! My good friends Amber, Beth and Kristin got out of bed way before the sun came up to meet me at 6 a.m. for my first long training walk! It was great!! Having people to talk to makes the time just fly by, and these friends are always great company! I am so thankful for them!

Pre-Training Walk Walk

Although my 16 weeks of training doesn't officially start until tomorrow, yesterday morning I took the dogs for a 3.4 mile jaunt in preparation for my first "long" walk next weekend. The weather was overcast and 70 when we left, which was a nice treat for a July morning in Kansas! While I aspire to walk around 4 miles an hour during training, with all of the dogs' stopping and sniffing and peeing and waterbreaking, we took just about an hour to make it that far.

I'm really excited for my 5 mile walk next weekend, primarily because I have friends who are going to be walking along with me! It will be such a nice treat to have company of the two-legged variety! My friend Amber was the first to volunteer as my walking partner, and then a few of our other friends agreed to join in the fun as well. I've mapped out a 5 mile loop starting from Amber's house using MapMyRun.com, which is a great website for measuring routes for walking, running or biking without driving them in your car or using a GPS. Anyway, it should be a fun way to start my weekend walking!

A Week Away From Training Day

One week from today, I will officially start my training, and I'm very excited! During the last week, my 3-Day future seemed a little uncertain after an aggravation of the bulging disc in my back that happened on July 4. For five days I couldn't walk without excruciating pain, so I was having a hard time imagining how I was going to walk 60 miles in a few months. Thankfully, last Thursday I had my first epidural steroid injection (which was actually scheduled prior to the July 4 aggravation), and I'm so glad to report that it has already made a huge difference! Only two days later I was feeling almost normal, and tonight I actually walked the dogs for the first time! The steroid used was a time-released drug that should actually peak in a couple of weeks, so hopefully I'll continue to improve and be 100% healthy by later this month! I'm ready to walk!

Halfway Home!

This morning I awoke to find that I had received a couple of new donations late yesterday, both from friends of my mom's from high school. The exciting thing is, these donations put me over the halfway point in my fundraising! I now have $1150 towards my $2200 minimum! Very exciting!

Although I have set my personal goal at $3000 this year (which seems reasonable since last year I raised $4800), I am still very excited about this milestone. Raising just over $1000 in 4 months seems completely doable--that's only like $55 a week in the next 19 weeks before the event!

Workshop Milestone

Last night, Vikkie and I went to a 3-Day workshop at a Dick's store in KC, put on by a few walkers who are participating in their 6th 3-day this year. They presented information about shoes, packing, gear, apparel and event logistics. Although most of it was review, it was good to be reminded of some things I probably would have forgotten!! There were a few new tidbits of information that were helpful, and I was also glad that Vikkie came along to learn a little more about how to prepare for the event.

We also met a really nice woman named Beth, a breast cancer survivor herself, who is walking in the San Diego event this year as well. She actually grew up in that area and has walked San Diego for the last four years, and she says it's absolutely wonderful! She gave us a few climate and travel related tips, and also informed us that around 4,500 people walked in last year's event! It's going to be huge!

Another (very silly) reason I wanted to go to the workshop was so that I could put another sticker on my milestone badge! Although it seems a little childish, each participant is given a little badge that you can use to chart your progress as you prepare for the event. There are stickers for reading through the manual, getting your first donation, taking your first training walk, reaching higher donation levels, taking longer training walks, etc. There is also a sticker for attending a workshop, which I can now add to my badge!

I have to admit that before I registered last year, when my friend Cindy was telling me about the badge and how you record your individual milestones, I thought it sounded kind of silly. Then as soon as my milestone badge came in the mail and I started putting stickers on it, I realized it was kind of addictive, even if it is a little childish!

Last year the only milestone I didn't reach was securing a matching gift. I couldn't seem to find any of my donors who worked for a company that would match, which is ironic since both Chad and I work for companies that have matching gift programs! Unfortunately KU Endowment only matches gifts to KU, and last year I didn't have any donors who worked at Westar! I'll have to remedy that situation this year!

Training Schedule

Last year, I followed the suggested 24 week training schedule put out by the 3-Day organization. Not only did that feel like an eternity, but by the time the event rolled around, I felt completely over-prepared. The walk didn't really turn out to be that hard after 580 miles of training!

So this year, I decided that I'd use the shorter 16 week training schedule as a guide, and then create my own less time consuming plan instead. Last year, the walks that were difficult to fit into the week were the 5 and 6 mile walks on the weekdays. Trying to walk 6 miles before work means getting up at 5 a.m., which I'd like to try to avoid if possible! Instead of walking 3-6 mile walks on 2 different weekdays, I decided I would instead walk about 2 miles every weekday. Since I walk the dogs about a mile and a half almost every night anyway, it won't be much of a change in schedule, and all in all, the weekly miles will be about the same. So, here is my planned schedule:

So only about 4 more weeks until I get started! I'll definitely be looking for walking partners during those weeks, so if you're interested in joining me, definitely let me know! :)

San Diego Weather

Over the weekend I started thinking about the climate in San Diego, wondering what I would need to pack with regard to walking apparel. I've been there in the summer and know that the weather is generally sunny and 75 almost every day during that time of year, but I wasn't really sure what the weather is like in November. I did some Googling on the subject, and came up with this webpage (which is really a site to help plan your wedding) with some great info on San Diego weather in each month of the year. Here's what it says about November:

November has a normal maximum temperature of 69.9 degrees and an average minimum of 53.9 degrees which shows the greatest mean range of any month. It also shows a noticeable cooling trend and the mean temperature of 62.0 degrees is 5.7 degrees lower than for October. Since hot, dry easterly winds decrease during the month, maximum temperatures of 90 degrees or higher have occurred less frequently than in September and October. As a rule, temperatures seldom have gone above 80 degrees or below 40 degrees, although 97 degrees was recorded in 1977 and 1976 and 36 degrees in 1919.

Precipitation increases with the monthly average becoming 1.45 inches and the number of days with a measurable amount is 5. Regardless of the fact that there have been several Novembers with no rainfall, the rainy season May be said to begin during the month as amounts in excess of 2 inches have been recorded on several occasions. The greatest monthly total was 5.82 inches in 1965.

High winds have been infrequent but an unusually severe storm in 1944 produced a maximum of 51 mph at the National Weather Service.

More sunshine can be expected in November than any other month. Total possible sunshine is 74 percent. Clear days average 15, partly cloudy 7 and cloudy 8 with 4 days of heavy fog. The relative humidity averages 72 percent in the early morning, 57 percent near noon and 61 percent in the late afternoon.

More sunshine than in any other month--AWESOME! :) With average highs of 70, I probably won't really need to buy many other "performance" apparel items for cooler temperatures like I was thinking I might need to do! I think my tank tops and t-shirts will do just fine when it's 70 and sunny!!

Let's Get Serious

Now that the Relay for Life is complete, I'm ready to start getting serious about my 3-Day fundraising. I recently surpassed the $700 mark thanks to my friend and coworker Laurie (who is herself a breast cancer survivor), which puts me within a few hundred dollars of the half way point! This week I need to send out donation forms in the mail to a few people who requested them after receiving my email, as well as to a few donors from last year who don't have an email address. Since I have to complete my fundraising 30 days before the event in order to do online check-in, that means I have just under 4 months to get my fundraising completed! I need to get on the ball!

In other 3-Day related news: a new logo for the event was recently unveiled! Pretty exciting, I know. Although I'm not as big of a fan of hotter pink, I hope that means that we'll soon be receiving t-shirts just for registering like we did last year. They always serve as a great conversation starter and a great way to identify other 3-Day walkers around town. Last year I met a fellow walker at a softball game, and this year I met one at Mutt-n-Strut who will be walking in Cleveland.

Within a month or so I'll start my official training, so I'll be posting the details of that within the next couple of weeks. At that point I'll be looking for walking partners! :)

Gift Pyramids

Just because I think it's kind of interesting to break it down, I threw together some gift pyramids to help me figure out how many donors of each dollar amount I would need to get me to my $2200 minimum.

If I only have 5 people at $100 and 5 at $60, that means I need 100 people to give me gifts of $10 and $20 dollars. That sounds a little bit daunting!











Now, if I could only find 65 people who would donate, I would need a few more $60 donations, along with a few more at $20 and $25 instead of $10, but that seems a lot more doable!










In the best case scenario, I would find just a few super generous and compassionate people who could give me $250--then I'd be in business! That way I'd only need a handful of donors at the $60, $25 and $20 levels! Best of all, I'd only need 38 donors!












No matter what giving scenario actually ends up occurring, hopefully it will start occurring soon! I'll feel a lot better once I get a few more donation dollars under my belt!

My First Donations!!

Very early this morning, I was thrilled to receive my first donation, resulting from an email I sent out to those people who supported me from last year. Hooray for Aunt Meg--thanks for getting me started with a very generous donation! I got two more donations today and only have $1,930 more to go before reaching my minimum! :)

It's Official!!

California, here we come! Last night I officially registered the Jayhawks for Jugs for the San Diego 3-Day!! Thanks to those of you who helped us decide on a team name by voting. Although the event is still 6 months away, I'm already very excited. The good news is, we have lots of time to prepare and fundraise. The bad news is, November will take forever to get here!

I probably don't really need to start fundraising this early, but since I also need to secure some donations for the Relay for Life in the next couple of months, I'm thinking I'll just send out one email to handle both solicitations. That way, people can either give towards my 3-Day adventure, or they can honor/memorialize a loved one who has battled a different kind of cancer through the Relay. Plus, I'll be bothering my friends and family with one annoying "ask for money" email instead of two, which I know will make my husband very happy. He's convinced that people will start running the other way when they see me coming, since I'm almost always looking for donations for one cause or another. I can't help it--there are a few causes in this world (homeless dogs and cancer being two of them) that I'm really passionate about!

My friend and teammate Vikkie certainly hasn't wasted any time getting started with her fundraising. She registered this morning at about 9:00 a.m. This evening at 5:30 p.m., she had already raised $695!! She's a fundraising rock star! I'll definitely be sending out emails soon so she quits making me look bad! :)

Going to California

My friend Vikkie and I have been talking about it since my last post on the subject, and although we haven't registered yet, we're pretty sure we're going to walk in the Breast Cancer 3-Day in San Diego this November. We were originally leaning towards going to Chicago in August, but since Vikkie is the event planner extraordinaire at our Med Center office and her biggest event of the year is that month, Chicago wouldn't really fit into the schedule. We briefly kicked around the idea of going to Dallas/Fort Worth, since it's close and we have friends there to stay with, but we decided that DFW wasn't quite exciting enough for us. So at this point, we're planning on going to California, but we can't register until we think of a good name for our duo. There are over 600 teams already registered for the San Diego walk, and with each team having 2 to 10 people on it, that's already a LOT of walkers!

Most of the teams have names related to breasts or cancer or cures or walking or where they're from or who they're walking for, and many of the team names are quite hysterical. This year's S.D. walk has "3-Day Street Walkers", "Hoofin' for Hooters", "Babes for Boobs", "Girls Goin' Miles" and about 625 other teams! There is even a team called " 'Hawks for Hooters" (some of whom are from Kansas) that we could join if we wanted to, but we thought it would be more fun to think of a team of our own. So, here are some of the names I've come up with so far:

*Jayhawks for Jugs
*Jayhawks on a Journey
*Journeying Jayhawks for Jugs
*Kansans for a Cure
*KU Kansans for a Cure
*KU Kansans for Curing Kazongas
*Crazy KU Kansans for Cure

You get the drift. I could probably come up with a few more permutations of the same few words (or maybe replace Kazongas for Coconuts or something), but I'll spare you any more ridiculousness. I would, however, appreciate your input, so vote for your favorite below, or leave me a suggestion for something entirely different. If you need more ideas, you can check the complete list of already registered San Diego teams. Thanks for voting!

To Walk Or Not To Walk

Part of the reason I started this blog last year was to share my experiences in preparing for and participating in the Breast Cancer 3-Day. It was an interesting journey, and I wish I'd actually started blogging about it back when I started fundraising and training in the Spring. I think it would have been nice to tell the story from beginning to end instead of just blogging about the end result.

When I finished the 3-Day last year, I wasn't entirely sure if I'd walk in the 2007 event. It was a wonderful experience, but not quite as life-changing as I imagined. I think this was partially because it didn't turn out to be quite as challenging as I thought it would be. Raising $2200 wasn't too hard at all thanks to my generous friends and family, and walking 60 miles was actually pretty easy after putting in 580 training miles over the course of 24 weeks. Even though I wasn't committed to participating again, I at least thought I'd have the option. Then a few weeks after the last 3-Day event of the year, the organizers announced that they were pulling Kansas City from the list of 12 host cities for 2007. Even though the K.C. event alone raised $2.5 million last year, they apparently decided the participation numbers weren't high enough.

So this year, if I do decide to walk again, I will have to travel to one of the 12 cities participating: Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Seattle, Philadelphia, Atlanta, Tampa Bay, Dallas/Ft. Worth, San Diego, and unannounced cities in Michigan and Arizona. Chad thinks I would be insane to travel hundreds of miles to walk 60 miles, but I'm thinking that this might just make it a more interesting and worthy challenge!

I should probably make a decision about this relatively soon, but there are a few things that are holding me back. 1) The bulging disc in my back still hasn't recovered from last year, so that's kind of my biggest obstacle at this point. Hopefully soon I'll get some relief from the new massage therapist and acupuncturist I'll be seeing in the next couple of months, so that will no longer be an issue. 2) There could be some significant expenses in traveling to the host city, and I'm cheap. 3) It's hard to imagine myself flying to another city all alone without any friends or family members, only to walk and camp for 3 days with thousands of people I don't know. The idea just makes me so lonely! If I'm going to do this, I really need to find someone who wants to take on the challenge with me! The experience would be so much more wonderful if I were accompanied by even one close friend or dear relative. If you think you might be that wonderful person, you should check out the inspirational video on the 3-Day website to see what a cool event it is!

I tried to convince Chad that he should walk with me, but he wasn't really very keen on (a.k.a. adamantly opposed to) that idea. Now I'm trying to convince him that I should walk in the San Diego event and he should join the crew there, so that we could go together and pretend like the trip was just a vacation. I would walk and he would work, but we could camp/eat together each day and then spend a few days relaxing in San Diego after the event is over. Chad isn't too thrilled about this idea either, since he doesn't really think it would be much of a vacation at all.

Maybe in the next couple of months I will build up enough courage to take on San Diego all alone. After all, it is my favorite city in the world--at least of those I've actually visited!

Day 3--Finally!

I know everyone has probably been on pins and needles waiting to hear the synopsis of the last day of my 3-Day adventure. :) I honestly haven't been very motivated lately, but tonight I'm finally going to try to finish my exciting story. Maybe the problem was that it really wasn't very exciting.

Day 3
Sunday began in the warehouse where we had slept, when someone's alarm went off at 4:00 a.m., even though there was no place to shower, dress, etc., and buses weren't supposed to come get us until 5:00. I'm not sure what people are thinking sometimes. After struggling to sleep for another hour, we packed up our sleeping bags and went to sit in line for almost 90 minutes. Ugh. They couldn't take us back to camp because there was still so much lightning in the area. We finally got back on the bus for the ride back to camp, but when we arrived, there was all this crazy traffic and a couple of vehicles stuck in the mud. Our bus couldn't get through the traffic, nor would the driver let us off the bus because the door was on the wrong side of the road. After sitting in the same spot for over 30 minutes, the driver was finally able to turn around, but then the "organizers" wouldn't let her drive us up to camp. We exited the bus and walked the almost half mile up a hill to our tents, which were filled with about an inch of water. At that point, I was actually very thankful for the concrete floor of the warehouse!

Thankfully, I had followed the packing instructions provided and had placed all of my clothing in plastic bags, and also packed a tarp to cover my suitcase. Although it still got a little damp, everything inside was dry, thankfully! Unfortunately, unless we wanted to stand in water, we had to go get dressed in port-a-potties. Ugh again. As soon as I was dressed, we heard the announcement--the route would be CLOSING in 45 minutes. This meant that we had to pack our stuff, take down our tents, eat our breakfast, and get on the road before it closed, or else we would be bused to lunch and not allowed to walk at all (they want to make sure everyone is finished in plenty of time for closing ceremonies). I kicked it into high gear and made it on the course with about 15 minutes to spare, although I left Cindy and Carla at camp in order to do so. They ended up starting their walk just minutes before the route closed at 8:45!

I think the obstacles of the morning only increased my determination to walk that day. I took off at a quick pace, caught up with a woman who walking at a good clip, and we began talking, walking, and passing people left and right! It was the first day that the route was really crowded, but also the first day that the weather was actually cool. The temperature had dropped at least 20 degrees overnight and the cloud cover made it almost chilly. We got sprinkled on from time to time, but thankfully there were no significant showers.

Just before we got to the lunch stop, I lost my walking partner Stacy, who didn't want to continue as such a fast pace. A 57-year-old woman named Regina took her place, and she was all about getting finished ASAP, which was right up my alley! Regina had also left her team behind the day before, citing slow walking and general crankiness. We were on a mission to the finish line, so after a quick lunch, we took off again and powered through the pit stops and remaining cheering stations. By the time we arrived on the grounds of the Liberty Memorial it was right around 2:00, but since there were only 70+ people who had finished ahead of us, it was honestly rather anticlimactic. There were a few crew members to cheer us across the finish line, but there were very few spectators. I had invited Mom and Chad to be there at 5:00 for opening ceremonies, since I had no idea that spectators were even allowed before then. While I felt great physically, it was a little lonely emotinally! The nice thing was that I was able to relax and cheer on the hundreds of other walkers as they came across the finish line, which was an emotional experience for many. It was great to be there for Carla and Cindy, who walked the entire day without getting "swept", despite Carla's blisters and sore hip.

The closing ceremonies were definitely emotional, as we were able to see how many of the women we had been walking with for the last 3 days were actually breast cancer survivors (donning the pink shirts). The youngest survivor who walked was 29. The oldest was 65. It just reinforced the fact that this horrible disease affects women of all ages, from all walks of life. While I wouldn't say that the 3-day was the most emotional or physically challenging thing I've done in my life, I still definitely think it is a worthwhile and important event. You can't argue with $2.8 million raised--by the K.C. walkers alone. When next year rolls around, if I'm still physically able, I'll probably do it all over again. It's a great way to honor my mom and the 200,000 other women who will be diagnosed this year, and it definitely makes me feel like I'm doing my part to help eradicate this deadly disease.

For more pictures of the event, view my pictures on Picasa!